Daily Digest 12/4 - Illinois Plans Bond Sale, The End Of Unemployment Program

Economy

A surge in the number of people requiring emergency food aid, a decrease in the amount of calories consumed by British families, and a doubling of the number of malnutrition cases seen at English hospitals represent “all the signs of a public health emergency that could go unrecognised until it is too late to take preventative action,” they write.

“This is sabotage, live and on air,” Maduro said in a televised speech from the presidential palace last night. “Attention all armed forces of the state: the fascists are getting desperate before the elections.”

Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro said he’ll sign legislation today to regulate the price of new and used cars in the country’s latest measure to combat record inflation.

The law will allow the government to set car prices, require manufacturers to provide weekly production figures, ensure that used car prices don’t exceed new car costs and provide licenses to individuals to import a vehicle using an account in euros or dollars with a state bank, Maduro said yesterday in a national address.

Continued inaction on pension reform has hammered Illinois' credit ratings to the lowest levels among U.S. states, and investors in the U.S. municipal bond market are demanding higher yields for Illinois debt.

Bill Gross’s Pimco Total Return Fund (PTTRX), which lost its title as the world’s largest mutual fund in October, had its seventh straight month of withdrawals in November as investors continued to flee bonds.

Clients pulled an estimated $3.7 billion from Pacific Investment Management Co.’s Total Return Fund last month, leaving the fund with assets of $244 billion at the end of November, Chicago-based research firm Morningstar Inc. said today in an e-mailed statement

More than 1 million people will see their extended unemployment benefits immediately cut off at the end of the month if Congress doesn't act.

An emergency federal benefit program was put in place during the recession to help those who are unemployed longer than six months. That allowed them to get as much as a year and a half of help while they searched for work, even after state benefits ran out.

Gold & Silver

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Boston University Economics Professor, Laurence Kotlikoff, says, “The country is in worse fiscal shape by many miles than Detroit. So, the country is essentially bankrupt.” Dr. Kotlikoff estimates the long term debt and liabilities of America are more than $200 trillion! He is spearheading a bill in Congress called The Inform Act. It is an attempt to wake up the nation to our dire financial situation so something can be done to fix this enormous problem. "